Healthcare: Remote care vital to reduce costs

Sarah Murray

Financial Times

27 February 2012

Ivan McConnell, a healthcare expert at PA Consulting Group, is quoted in an article on mobile technology in healthcare in the Financial Times, The Connected Business special report. Mobile devices linked to monitoring equipment could transform treatment and reduce the cost of healthcare. Ivan gives his view on the challenges of transmitting vast volumes of health data.

Ivan points out that the prospect of millions of users monitoring their vital signs will change the job of the healthcare workers that look after them: “When you train as a doctor or nurse, a lot of what you learn is about visual cues and talking to people. If you don’t have that, you have to use different skills.”

Ivan goes on to talk about how healthcare providers should respond to the challenge of managing data generated by mobile devices: “If you have 1,000 patients, you might get 100 alerts, but you might need to respond to only 50.”